1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a sealing device easily attached and detached, a process cartridge capable of easily attaching and detaching the sealing device and its assembling method, and an image forming apparatus attachable of to the process cartridge.
2. Description of Related Art
Process cartridges integrating equipment such as an electrophotographic photosensitive drum, a charger, a developer, and a cleaning member into a united body so as to form a cartridge, having a construction in which a user, by detachably inserting such a cartridge into a body of the apparatus, can replace parts of a worn-out photosensitive drum and can supply toner, and thereby making its maintenance easy, are practically available these days. To save resources and energy or parts of such cartridges have been recycled and reused. Recycling is, as here, composed of, for example, crushing and melting the materials such as plastics used as parts to return to original materials and of manufacturing some products again. In contrast, reusing is, for example, to clean used parts when necessary or to process so as to regain functions of such used parts (for instance, such as coating solvent, polishing, or grinding) and to use them again as parts in the same application.
With such process cartridges, for example, parts such as the charging roller and the developing roller may be reusable even after toner in the cartridge has been consumed. Therefore, a recent tendency shows that such a cartridge is collected after its toner has been consumed and that the parts such as the rollers are taken out to be reused. The cartridge frame, itself, is also once crushed and melted, and then used as plastic material for cartridge frame again, or cleaned to be reused as parts.
A conventional cartridge frame is made with sealing devices adhering to some portions thereof to prevent the contained developer (hereinafter called "toner " from scattering outside of the frame. For example, in a cleaning station, a cleaning blade 51 and a collecting sheet 52 are provided to a cleaning frame 50 as shown in FIG. 17. Sealing members 53, 54 are attached by adhesive to the bottoms of the cleaning blade 51 and the collecting sheet 52, respectively, to prevent the toner from leaking out of the ends in a longitudinal direction of the blade 51 or the sheet 52. End sealing members 56 are attached by adhesive to the cleaning frame 50 to prevent the toner from leaking from the clearances between the ends in the longitudinal direction of a photosensitive drum 55 and the cleaning frame 50.
When assembling such process cartridges, an operator must mount those plural sealing members to each cleaning frame and is thereby required to be involved in such complicated work. Those sealing members may impair the quality of reproduced products if mixed with impurities when plastic frames are melted to be recycled because such sealing members are formed of materials such as soft polyurethane foam. Accordingly, sealing members and adhesive have to be removed from the frame when the frame is to be recycled. Moreover, when such frames are reused, such sealing members are necessarily removed because the products cannot be reused as parts unless the sealing members are sufficiently removed. However, it is difficult to completely remove the sealing members and adhesive, which directly adhere to the cartridge frame, so that the removing process results in laborsome and complicated process.